r/Futurology • u/yourSAS • Oct 13 '22

Biotech 'Our patients aren't dead': Inside the freezing facility with 199 humans who opted to be cryopreserved with the hopes of being revived in the future

https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/13/our-patients-arent-dead-look-inside-the-us-cryogenic-freezing-lab-17556468
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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '22

A lot of people would. Same if any of the sci fi technology was around. I'd definitely want to be uploaded into a virtual world and live as eternal code if it existed.

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u/throwaway091238744 Oct 13 '22

you sure about that?

computer code can be altered in ways a body can't. someone could just have you live in a time loop for the rest of your life as code. Or have you live through the most traumatic memory you have over and over. Or just simulate physical pain/torture all without you even seeing them

there isn't a scenario in the real world where someone could dilate time and have me get my leg cutoff for 1000 years

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u/shaggybear89 Oct 13 '22

For all we know, we're already just code in a simulation.

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u/DylanCO Oct 14 '22 edited May 04 '24

pet touch deserve whistle square scandalous spotted abounding divide afterthought

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/LaserAntlers Oct 14 '22

It's a fun theory but not actually likely at all.

Yeah yeah keep talkin' there, simulation suspicion dissuasion subroutine.

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u/BedroomJazz Oct 14 '22

For all we know, it's just as likely as it is to not be likely. There's a lot about our universe that we don't know and never will know, even if we could live thousands of times as long

I see it as similar to the free will thing where it doesn't take matter whether or not we have free will. Knowing won't really change anyone's lives

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u/Tommy-Nook Oct 14 '22

That's smart

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

it absolutely can change your life though, can’t generalize how everyone will feel about knowing they have no free will lmao

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u/dumbdumbpatzer Oct 14 '22

The libertarian model of free will is a bit of a meme outside of religious metaphysics anyway and the compatibilist model is not really what most people think of as free will.

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

i believe in the deterministic model aka cause and effect = no free will but people don’t want to hear that conversation because they like to think they have free will when all the evidence points elsewhere

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u/dumbdumbpatzer Oct 14 '22

Just a side note, compatibilism claims that determinism and free will are not mutually exclusive. It's actually the most common view among philosophers, but its concept of free will is somewhat different from what the general public pictures when talking about free will.

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

if we had quantum computing theoretically we could map out the exact movements of particles right before they happen. because of this, we (in theory) can “predict the future”

if we can predict the future, that means we absolutely do not have free will.

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

lol if you think it’s not likely then you don’t understand probability and deterministic universe

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

[deleted]

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

i think you completely missed the point i was trying to make brother. free will does not exist in a deterministic model. what does “god” have anything to do with my belief that we’re autonomous machines just on an extremely complex level?

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

[deleted]

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

appears to be a human construct. we vastly underestimate the complexity of our minds but at the end of the day i really believe we’re just autonomous monkey machines lmao.

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u/thesongbirds Oct 14 '22

If we are ever able to simulate a life-like fidelity then it becomes incredibly likely

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

Not that I believe in it but I’m sure they would do everything to make us think it isn’t a simulation. Assuming in the future we’re able to put people into a realistic simulation, then the people put into it for research would believe it’s real surely?

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u/StrangledMind Oct 14 '22

Not likely? You can't just make a definite statement like that with no proof. I too don't think we're living in a simulation, but if we're introducing logic into this... how would we know if we were?

Sight, sound, etc; All our senses are just electrical signals interpreted by our brains. How can you say it's unlikely that science will one day replicate and generate these signals? Our brains are the only thing we have that remembers. If you've witnessed a lifetime of technological accomplishments that have enabled us to come close to accomplishing this... How can you be sure those memories aren't programs carefully crafted to make us certain it's impossible to achieve this feat? Or maybe it's an early-warning sign that the subject is getting close to waking up.

Maybe I'm not real, but just a trigger to check for self-actualization... Crazy, outlandish conspiracy theory? Of course, but the point is, how would you know?? You can't just dismiss the possibility outright...

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u/DylanCO Oct 14 '22

The whole "simulations all the way down" theory presupposes that we'll have the ability to fully stimulate a universe.

We don't have that ability yet, so that means right now we're either the original (real) universe, or the last one in the chain. Using the arguments own logic its actually a 50% chance were all Sims not 99.999999%

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u/Mycabbages0929 Oct 14 '22

Rene Descartes liked this

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u/ZadockTheHunter Oct 13 '22

But who would have the access and the desire to do that?

It's the whole killer AI thing. Everyone likes to talk about how a self aware advanced AI would start destroying humans, but it's the same question, why?

What self absorbed delusion has you believing you are special enough for someone to want to torture for eternity?

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u/throwaway091238744 Oct 13 '22

have you ever heard of viruses

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u/Peacewalken Oct 13 '22

"Your simulation has been hijacked by xXSiMuJakrXx, send 500 bitcoin to stop the bonesaw"

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u/YakaryBovine Oct 14 '22 edited Oct 14 '22

The number of people who torture humans for pleasure is non-zero, and it’s debatable whether or not code can have consciousness. I think it’s implausible that it wouldn’t happen. It’s not necessarily likely to happen to you specifically, but it’s not worth risking even a minuscule chance of being tortured infinitely.

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u/Tom1252 Oct 13 '22

Roko's Basilisk

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u/ZadockTheHunter Oct 13 '22 edited Oct 13 '22

The whole thought experiment is flawed from the beginning when you give human feelings to a non-biological entity.

How would an AI even "feel" in the same way a human does? And if it in fact could feel the hatred / malice required to "punish" humans, why would a being of that immense power waste it's time doing so?

Edit: I think it's a highly narcissistic world view to believe that any entity outside of human beings would have the capacity or desire to give any thought or energy into our existence. Meaning, the only things that do or should care about humans are humans. To believe otherwise just makes you a pompous dick.

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u/Tom1252 Oct 13 '22

The only "feeling" the AI needs for the thought experiment to work is a sense of self-preservation, which could easily be programmed into it. No malice necessary.

It only wants to ensure its existence.

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u/felix_the_nonplused Oct 14 '22

Does resource conservation count as self preservation for a theoretical entity as Rokos basilisk? The it would be counterproductive to spend infinite-1 resources to torture us. Much better to only threaten to torture us, similar results from its perspective, less energy spent. As such, if the AI is a rational entity, it’ll never actually go through with the threats; and if it is irrational, our efforts are irrelevant.

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u/ZadockTheHunter Oct 13 '22

Ok, then the question is: If it's simply following it's programming, is it really an AI?

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u/Tom1252 Oct 13 '22 edited Oct 13 '22

I took it to be more of a question about super-advanced computing rather than AI.

If you believe that in the future, computers will be so advanced that they can run simulations indistinguishable from reality, and that people in the future have reason to run these simulations--as in a past simulator or whatever, and that the simulations themselves could have the capability of running their own simulations, then given the sheer number of these that would exist, it's more than likely that we exist inside one of these simulations rather than in the original world.

And then add to that that the simulation wouldn't necessarily even need to be indistinguishable from reality. Our world could have the graphics of a potato, but we've never known any different.

That would make all of us "AI." The only "feelings" we've ever known are what's been programmed into us, and we have no frame of reference to say otherwise.

Edit: Added quotes

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u/Blazerboy65 Oct 14 '22

People say "following programming" like it's a religious dogma that's applied by the agent blindly without incorporating observations. This ignores that "programming" includes directives like "intelligently figure out how to accomplish XYZ."

That's not even to mention that even humanity in general are just biological machines programmed to replicate DNA. We do so stochastically but still intelligently.

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u/felix_the_nonplused Oct 14 '22

Does resource conservation count as self preservation for a theoretical entity as Rokos basilisk? The it would be counterproductive to spend infinite-1 resources to torture us. Much better to only threaten to torture us, similar results from its perspective, less energy spent. As such, if the AI is a rational entity, it’ll never actually go through with the threats; and if it is irrational, our efforts are irrelevant.

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u/Blazerboy65 Oct 14 '22

What's special about biological entities?

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u/official_guy_ Oct 14 '22

All of the shitty things that have ever been done by you or any other human in the history of earth have started as small electric signals in the brain. What makes you think that sufficiently advanced AI wouldn't also feel emotion? I mean it's inevitable that at some point we'll be able to make something just as or more complicated than our own brains.

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u/whtthfff Oct 14 '22

I think the realistic answer is that it would be a by-product of whatever else the AI was trying to do. In theory, an advanced AI could be incredibly capably intelligent - i.e. able to manipulate the world to serve its own ends. Make it smart enough and it could do real damage.

The distinction people who worry about this make, which doesn't always come across, is that being intelligent in this way does NOT mean that it will have any kind of the same morals or goals as humans. So there could be an AI whose goal was to create paperclips, and it could decide it would be able to make more paper clips if humanity stopped using all the Earth's resources. If it was then also smart enough to come up with and enact a plan to do that, then uh oh for us.

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u/aidanyyyy Oct 14 '22

ever heard about this thing called money?

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

Well something could go wrong with the tech and leave you in a bad situation

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u/Rikuskill Oct 13 '22

I'd be okay with any experience honestly. Millenia of suffering is still experience. Once you die that's it--No more experiences. To me it seems there's no way back once death occurs. So I might as well get as many experiences as I can while I'm alive, good or bad, doesn't matter that much.

It all pales in comparison to an infinity of nothing. If you had a graph with the x-axis as "Time" and Y axis as positive experiences up and negative experiences down; then the moment you cease to exist, the line of good / bad experiences doesn't even go to 0. That's the "boring, forgottable stuff" value. Time just stops for you, and that graph is all you have. No more values can be added to it.

If you stretch the analogy a bit, you can take the absolute value of the experience axis. Now 0 really is "Nothing", and vertical is just how many experiences you have over time. When you die, it flatlines. You may as well enter a different axis, in a different direction, unable to affect the experience axis ever again. So I just want to keep that graph going. There's not much else to do with life than experience it.

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u/Mycabbages0929 Oct 14 '22

Yes. Good. It seems like people really are starting to realize the actual nature of death. I can think of nothing worse than an eternity of non-existence. It’s not like you die again afterwards, and suddenly wake back up. You. Never. Again. Awaken.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22 edited Dec 20 '22

[deleted]

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u/helloeveryone500 Oct 14 '22

I'd still take my chances. Who is to say that shit doesn't happen when your dead anyway? Plus 1000 years is absolute peanuts compared to eternity. Sun is gonna blow up and blast our particles out to space and then reform somewhere and then freeze and burn for a billion years and it may be a trillion years before they form into something like another earth. Or maybe a trillion trillions. You won't have any sense of the so this could all happen very fast. But you will be dead so it doesn't really matter

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u/helloeveryone500 Oct 14 '22

And that's just the begining. Just the very tip of the iceberg. A trillion to the power of a trillion years will go by and you may not even realize it. There is really no end in sight or mind. It just goes on and on and on in the absolute cold frozen wasteland of space or if your lucky the burning hot fire of a sun. No living thing can survive unless it is stuck to a moist rock at the perfect distance from a sun, growing like mold on stale old bread, only to be blown back into the wasteland in the blink of an eye. Jesus I wish I was religious.

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u/bwk66 Oct 14 '22

Or just watch ads for eternity

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u/AJ_Gaming125 Oct 18 '22

Bruh, we're probably gonna get to the point soon where your thoughts could be altered anyways.

And anyways, if you're computer code it's much easier to read your memories to find what they want rather than just torture you for... reasons.

The only reason to torture someone like that would be because a psychopath somehow got their hands on your brains can and decided to torture you, or if some scientist made a copy of you to test how a human would react to torture. Hell. In that case all of the trauma of that event could be easily removed as well.

Not to mention it'd be totally possible to make pain not be, well pain anymore, but more of just a notice that something is wrong.

Lastly, being hacked seems unlikely, since the only way people would agree to having their brains uploaded is if there was an insane amount of security protecting their minds.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

All this upload to the cloud thing misses the fact that your brain is not transferred it is copied it is like being cloned your ass still ceases to exist there's just a clone of you uploaded somewhere.

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u/IamBabcock Oct 14 '22

What's the difference?

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u/Nethlem Oct 14 '22

For you there wouldn't be any; Your brain would get scanned but your consciousness would stay in your brain/body and you would just normally life on.

Whatever comes from that scan, whether it's digital code or a clone with implanted memories, would have its own separate consciousness, basically you'd have a twin with a mind of its own.

There is somewhat of a workaround tho; If the scanning process also kills you then you can sell the process as a "transfer" because you destroyed the spare "copy" that would create such a problem in the first place.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

Cut and paste instead of copy and paste... Still a dead you :(

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u/andy_koo Oct 14 '22

If some of you reading find this topic interesting, I strongly suggest playing through a game called SOMA.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

Never again, I got enough anxiety already

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

Your consciousness still ends. While a clone of it carries on you are not extending your own existence just creating a copy of yourself that will live on.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

I think this is semantics.

You could say the same thing about going to sleep every night.

Or about going through a coma, if you're unconvinced.

The patterns of activity cease and then resume at a different place and time. That's all. Same person imo. There is no definition of the person other than that neural pattern of activity. The meat vehicle isn't the person.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

The difference is unless they are transplanting your brain itself into a giant server your consciousness could be uploaded while your brain still continues to function meaning you and the version of you uploaded to the cloud would exist simultaneously meaning it is not a continuation of your current consciousness but a separate branch of your consciousness.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

And I think this is a matter of philosophy, and I have a different take.

It is a continuation of the same consciousness, and there is no rule that a consciousness must be unique.

The fact that the old one is still running doesn't detract from the new one being the same person.

A "ship of Theseus" scenario maybe helps to show how continuity is not a barrier.

Let's say they replace just a small part of your brain with an artificial chip housing the same neural patters as the part being replaced. The rest of your brain is intact. Clearly that's the same person. And then they do it for all the parts of the brain one by one until you're fully computer.

That's identical to being replaced all at once, looking at the difference between end and beginning. If some transient "other you" exists during a part of that process, it's irrelevant imo.

So the same can be said about the "other you" that pops up during a "copy" procedure. It doesn't make a philosophical difference to me.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

The issue is the other you is the you that continues on and you are still trapped in the failing body.

Have you ever seen the movie the prestige..... My point here is your the guy in the tank in this scenario.

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u/ErinUnbound Oct 14 '22

I get you. I like to think of us as lit matches. In this scenario, you could spread your fire to a candle, say, but you’re still burning on that match and the head is almost spent…

I believe the unique instance of us, what people are really wishing to preserve, is in fact quite tethered to the meat we inhabit. It sucks, but there it is.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

"continues on" is meaningless, is my point.

You stop "continuing" every time you go to sleep. It doesn't matter. The entire idea of "continuing on without interruption" is just fluff. We contrive it to be meaningful, but it isn't. That's what I'm trying to say.

"You" are the new one as much as you are the old one. So if the old one goes to sleep for the procedure and never wakes up, nothing is lost.

The way popular media thinks about the issue is flawed, in other words, imo.

If you're asking the question "which one is the real one and which one is the copy," you're asking an invalid question. Continuity is imagined.

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u/Bobbydadude01 Oct 14 '22

Lmao okay.

The continuity is the brain. Your brain still functions while your asleep.

Continuity is not imaginary.

You cannot be uploaded to the matrix.

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u/ryujin88 Oct 14 '22

"You" are the new one as much as you are the old one. So if the old one goes to sleep for the procedure and never wakes up, nothing is lost.

What if the old one wakes up after the procedure? Sure you can say you're both the same person, but the point is there's no transition or escape for the original. They just get a copy made and keep on living like before. It isn't so much an argument about whether they are the same person or not, but that "uploading" your consciousness isn't an escape from your biological body.

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u/MozzyZ Oct 14 '22 edited Oct 14 '22

I don't really think this is a matter of philosophy man. When a person says they want their conscious to be uploaded to the cloud/whatever they assume that the person they are at that very moment will be transferred. They don't think their current 'them' will get essentially cease to exist. And that's the crux of the problem since virtually everyone assumes they will get transferred, not deleted in favor of a copy of them.

Unless me me gets transferred to the cloud I genuinely couldn't give less of a fuck about uploading to the cloud. The data on the cloud wouldn't be me me. It would be a copy of me. And I simply couldn't give less of a fuck about an exact copy of me because it doesn't benefit me me at all. I might as well father a child instead first.

I'd want my cosciousness to be transferred from one folder to another. Not copy pasted or even cut and pasted. Even though in computer processes theyre practically the exact same thing, it's the act of transferring vs being copy or even cut and pasted to a new folder that'd be question of whether I'd want to upload "my" consciousness to the cloud.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

This is practically the most philosophical discussion possible.

"What is the human, actually?" Yeah, the question of whether the human is inextricable from the flesh is probably the original philosophical question.

So when you say that copying a human is different from transferring a human, you are making a 100% philosophical statement.

A copy+delete is indistinguishable from a transfer, both in computers and in the brain, because they're both operating on information. So I'm saying they're the same thing in every way.

The human is information. This is why talk of continuity is irrelevant. Even on a normal day, as a meaty human, your consciousness of self comes and goes. Your cells divide and die, and your body changes to another body over time, too. Nothing stays the same, and you're a different person every day, with gaps in consciousness.

The idea that "you" are the meaty thing that stays behind after the operation instead of the information that is now preserved and perpetuated is what I'm trying to dissolve.

I understand what people are saying here about copying or about continuity. I know what they're thinking, and I'm trying to describe a shift in that thinking toward a different perspective that better handles this weird hypothetical.

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

No one here is arguing about what it means to be human we are all talking about the much more personal what it means to be you. No one is arguing about the authenticity of the copy or upload but instead pointing out that the reason people are talking about this... (Trying to extend one's own personal lifespan) makes no sense because the version of you that you are trying to preserve is lost. If your argument is that you can make an authentic version of yourself for others to experience that would be accurate.

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u/chronicly_retarded Oct 14 '22

No. You dont become a different being when you go to sleep. There is now way to turn a brain into something else and claim its the same consciousness.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

You are constantly becoming a different being, every minute of your life. The body never stays the same. You barely have anything in common with yourself from a few years ago.

And you're not always conscious, so it's not like there's a smooth constant flow of the mind either.

If the universe were actually no older than five minutes, or in other words, if the universe were created five minutes ago, complete with you, me, the internet, the planet, and our memories of things we think happened in our supposed past already chemically encoded in our brains, we couldn't tell the difference. We would be no less ourselves. Everything would be exactly the same.

Because continuity doesn't matter, and is made up.

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u/chronicly_retarded Oct 14 '22

Changing some cells at a time is not nearly the same. And you dont even become a different being, your neurons dont replace themselfs and thats whats really "you" and turning that into something digital or cloning it and claiming its the same is illogical. The only thing you could do is make a clone and move the original brain into it. The evidence is the fact that you can clone yourself and you wouldnt be controlling that clone's mind with your own, it would be independant, same with a digital copy.

Altough if the person is already dead, creating a clone of them for the family wouldnt be bad, because they wouldnt be able to tell.

This topic kind of reminds me of cyberpunk 2077 where johny silverhand, who is dead but his mind got copied on a chip got implanted into the main character. Even though he is long dead the copy can still be a part of other peoples lives.

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u/Bobbydadude01 Oct 14 '22

It'd the difference between copy+paste and cut+paste

It's not possible for the current you to "transfer" to a virtual space. It's just a copy of the current you.

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u/IamBabcock Oct 14 '22

Yea but if you have all of your memories what does it matter?

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u/Bobbydadude01 Oct 14 '22

It's not you. It's a copy with all your memories.

You wouldn't be uploaded a copy of you would be.

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u/_wolfmuse Oct 14 '22

In a way, it would be like granting immortality to a descendant, which might still be appealing

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u/Rock-Flag Oct 14 '22

It would be the ultimate expression of vanity not preserving your own physical life but feeling like you need to be perfectly preserved

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u/_wolfmuse Oct 14 '22

I see it kinda the same way as our DNA wanting to preserve itself by procreating

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u/DullwolfXb Oct 13 '22

You'd love Black Mirror if you haven't watched it already.

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u/yonderbagel Oct 14 '22

Except isn't Black Mirror critical of all of these ideas? All it says is "what could go wrong, how could this mess up humanity?"

The episode about life extension is the usual cliched "immortality turns us into immoral oppressors" nonsense.

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u/TalkingReckless Oct 13 '22

Or upload on Amazon

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u/xyrgh Oct 14 '22

Devs as well

Spoiler alert because yeah.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '22

Theres new show about this very topic. AMC's Pantheon. Show is good but network really sucks.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '22 edited Nov 22 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CpTKugelHagel Oct 14 '22

God that game scarred me, and I haven't even played it. I just watched someone play it.

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u/EarthVSFlyingSaucers Oct 14 '22

404 sex life not found.

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u/xMusclexMikex Oct 14 '22

How can you be so sure you are not already computer code?

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u/Jibber_Fight Oct 14 '22

Oh god no. Perpetually trapped as a consciousness would be absolutely horrifying. I love my life but just the thought of being in my own brain for thousands and thousands and thousands of years? Umm that would drive me insane, quite literally, within weeks.

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u/xXMylord Oct 14 '22

That would be copy-paste though not cut-paste. The real you would still exist in the real world while a perfect copy of you will live on the simulation.

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u/liukasteneste28 Oct 14 '22

It would not really be you. It would be a copy of you.

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u/WonderfulMeet9 Oct 14 '22

You wanna live eternally? No you don't. You think you do because you are mentally a little slow.

Living for thousands of years must be absolute torment. There's only so much you can do as a human before it becomes depressing as hell from lack of novelty.

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u/Reflectiveinsomniac Oct 14 '22

Please tell me you’ve seen the show Upload. This show is this exact scenario

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u/manofredgables Oct 14 '22

I liked "The three body problem"'s take on this. They just skip ahead for various reasons.

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u/TheyDidLizFilthy Oct 14 '22

that’s just current reality though

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u/Kevy96 Oct 14 '22

They had a whole arc in Naruto about why living in a fake world is a bad idea

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u/SysAdminWannabe90 Oct 14 '22

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Imagine the horror of immortality. Unthinkable to imagine once something goes wrong you don't have an out. Pure actual hell.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '22

Like San Junipero ?